THIS JUST IN!

Hundreds of vulnerabilities in the Pentagon’s IT ecosystem put the agency at risk of having billions of dollars in payments lost, stolen or duplicated, an internal watchdog found.

The Defense Department inspector general flagged some 800 new shortcomings across the agency’s IT systems and processes in 2018, according to a report published recently. Much of the flawed tech is used to process contract payments and other transactions, leaving the department’s financial ecosystem potentially vulnerable to bad actors, auditors said.

The IG also found the department failed to resolve more than 300 additional IT vulnerabilities that had been highlighted in prior years. The public report, which stemmed from an audit of the Pentagon’s financial statements, didn’t disclose which specific internal systems were affected.

The audit revealed “significant control deficiencies” that prevented officials from identifying when accidental or unauthorized changes were made to agency databases and applications.